Short Guide to Magic
If you're not afraid of walls of text, read on and I'll do my best to explain Magic in comparison to YGO. There's a surprising amount of similarities between the two games, considering that Magic was made 5 years before Yu Gi Oh on the other side of the world. We'll be talking about the most commonly played format of Magic. For your second question, I recommend buying Magic 2013 Core Set boosters. The latest block (Return to Ravnica) has some complex cards beginners might find hard to use. Core Sets have both effective cards and help new players learn Magic. I also recommend getting only one Starter Pack (pre-built deck and a single Booster) since they come with a pamphlet explaining the basics of Magic. An Introduction to Magic 1. Decks, Zones, and Turn Structure a. Decks in Magic have a minimum of 60 cards; 20 more than the minimum for YGO. You can only have a maximum of 4 copies of a single card, as compared to YGO's 3 card limit, except for Basic Land cards (which we'll talk about later). Tournaments have banned cards (but not limited cards), but since you're new, we'll leave those out. b. There are 5 "zones" in Magic, more or less like Yu-Gi-Oh's format. We have a player's hand, deck (commonly referred to as a Library), Battlefield, Graveyard, and "exiled zone" (which isn't really a zone; closest thing to the Removed From Play area). Unlike YGO, there are no limits to the amount of Monsters/Creatures or Spells & Traps/Non-Creature Spells on the battlefield at once. c. Turn structure, put at it's most basic (we'll break it down later) has some pretty similar "phases" to Yu Gi Oh as well. http://magiccards.info/extras/tips-tricks/magic-2011/parts-of-the-turn.jpg 2. Colors, Costs, and Cards (I generalize cards into 3 major categories.) a. Magic is divided up into 5 major colors; Red, Blue, White, Green, and Black. A lot of mistakes players make is that they think each color represents a specific element (e.g. Red is Fire). Something new players have to wrap their heads around is that Colors are the embodiment of abstract ideas (e.g. Red is Passion, Freedom, Impulse; Blue is Thought, Control, Manipulation; etc). There's also a "sixth color" which is Colorless. Colors are usually referenced by the first letter in their name (R for Red), except for Blue which is U. b. Going from Top to Bottom: The topline of a card is the card's name. Except on Land cards, the spell's cost is are the numbers on the right side of that line. Next we have the artwork. Right below that we have another line of text that tells us what kind of card it is; Basic Land, Land, Enchantment, (Legendary) Creature, Sorcery, Instant, Artifact, or Planeswalker. Don't worry about memorizing those now; just know Creature, Basic Land/Land, Planeswalker, and group the rest together just for now. Right of that is the Expansion Symbol; it just tells you what block the card was released. They're "color" represents rarity; each booster back has 15 cards, where 3 of those are Uncommons (silver emblems), 1 rare (gold), and the rest are commons (black). Occasionally, about a 1 in 8 chance, you'll get a Mythic Rare (red) instead of a Rare. Also, you might get a Foil card which can be any rarity in place of a common. On an extremely rare occasion, you might get 2 Mythic Rares in one pack. c. Land cards are one of the biggest differences between the two games. Lands are the main sources of Mana, which is the resource players ued to cast spells (every card, besides Land cards, are considered Spells before they successfully enter the battlefield). Resources are one of the biggest differences between Magic and YGO. Basic Land cards have 5 total types: Mountain (Red), Island (Blue), Plains (White), Forest (Green), and Swamp (Black). Each of the colors in parenthesis is the Mana color that land can produce. Normally, you can only put 1 land into the Battlefield per turn, and they cost nothing. d. Costs are the amount of mana needed to play that card. Typically, there will be a number encased in a gray circle, a Color Emblem, or both. Each Color Emblem represents 1 Mana of that color. The total mana cost is the sum of all those. For example, if a card has the number "3" in the gray circle and a Blue color emblem, the total cost is 4, where at least one of Mana used is Blue. There are also cards with an X in the gray circle, meaning you can pay any number of mana for the X value. You still have to pay for the color emblems there. e. Creature cards are pretty similar to Monsters in YGO. A big difference is that you can cast as many of them as you want per turn as long as you have the resources. For a template creature, here's Markov Blademaster (http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=249419). We can see the cost of casting it is 1RR, a total of 3 Mana where two of those have to be Red. On the typeline, we see it's a Vampire Warrior. With Magic, we've got innumerable creature types, and creatures can be more than one. Below that, we see it's abilities (We'll talk about static abilities like Double Strike later) and italicized flavor text. +1/+1 counters and -1/-1 counters mess with a creatures Power and Toughness, often stylized as P/T. That's what we have in the bottom right corner. Power is how much damage a creature does to players and other creatures. Toughness is the "life" the creature has, and where taken damage gets subtracted from. When a creature has 0 life, it dies and goes to the graveyard. Every creature has Summoning Sickness, meaning it normally can't attack or tap (talked about later) on the turn it comes down. f. We'll use Fireball (http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=221550). It's a Sorcery, meaning it can only be casted during one of your Main Phases. g. Planeswalkers; cards every player likes. These are characters in the lore, and their abilities are really useful to anyone. We'll use Sorin Markov (http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=238330) as a template. For Planeswalkers, where a creature's P/T is, is the Planeswalker's starting Loyalty. Loyalty functions as a Planeswalker's everything; resource and life. Every turn, you can choose to use a single Planeswalker ability. The cost will either add or subtract that amount of Loyalty from the Planeswalker (shortened to Walker). Players can have their creatures attack Planeswalkers as well, and creatures can also block those who attack Walkers. A Walker taking damage loses that much Loyalty. When a Walker loses all Loyalty from damage or using an ability, it goes to the graveyard. There are multiple versions of Planeswalkers, but they are all the same person, so they apply to the Legendary Rule in section "i." below. E.g. http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=249985 h. Quick summary of other cards. Instants; they can be played at any time. Artifacts; they stay in the battlefield and have varying abilities. Enchantments; also stay in the battlefield and have varying abilities. Unlike YGO, you can have any number of these cards in the battlefield at once. There's no such thing as a "field card" so you can have multiple enchantments out at once. i. Legendary rule; Basically, there's a sub-main type (if that makes any sense) of card called Legendary, so it's labelled as a Legendary Creature or Legendary Artifact, etc. Planeswalkers are also Legendary. If there are two Legendary permanents with the same name, they get put into the graveyard immediately. Basic Rules a. Each player starts with 20 Life (in comparison to 8000 Life Points). Easiest way to win a game is to reduce that 20 life to 0, which can be done by attacking with Creatures or direct-damage spells. Unlike YGO, you can't "aim" to attack Creatures; all attacks are at the Player directly or at a Planeswalker they control. That player then can use his/her own creatures to block attacking creatures. b. Tapping is the main mechanic in MTG. Once a card is Tapped, it can't attack, block, or use Tapping abilities until it becomes untapped during your next Untap Step (refer to Turn Structure way above). c. Side note; compared to cards in YGO, the cards in Magic are much more... potent. They seem to do a lot more because Magic is constantly changing, and a single card can turn the flow of the game around. Creature Abilities a. Creatures sometimes have innate abilities. Here's a short list of the most common ones off the top of my head -Flying; This creature cannot be blocked by creatures without Flying or Reach -Reach; This creature can block Flying creatures -First Strike; When this creature battles another creature, it deals it's damage first (so if the First Strike creature's Power is greater than the opposing Creature's Toughness, that enemy creature dies and does no damage to the FS creature). -Double Strike; Same thing as First Strike, but gets to deal its damage again when the opponent's creature deals damage. -Vigilance; This creature doesn't tap when it attacks -Defender; This creature can't attack -Deathtouch; Any creature that takes damage from this creature dies -Indestructable; This creature cannot die (even from Deathtouch). It can still be Exiled though. Everyone, make sure to tell me if I forgot anything.